The Great Controversy chapter 15

The Bible and the French Revolution

In the sixteenth century the Reformation, presenting an open Bible to the
people, had sought admission to all the countries of Europe. Some nations
welcomed it with gladness, as a messenger of Heaven. In other lands the
papacy succeeded to a great extent in preventing its entrance; and the light
of Bible knowledge, with its elevating influences, was almost wholly
excluded. In one country, though the light found entrance, it was not
comprehended by the darkness. For centuries, truth and error struggled for
the mastery. At last the evil triumphed, and the truth of Heaven was thrust
out. "This is the condemnation, that light is come into the world, and men
loved darkness rather than light." John 3:19. The nation was left to reap
the results of the course which she had chosen. The restraint of God's
Spirit was removed from a people that had despised the gift of His grace.
Evil was permitted to come to maturity. And all the world saw the fruit of
willful rejection of the light.

The war against the Bible, carried forward for so many centuries in France,
culminated in the scenes of the Revolution. That terrible outbreaking was
but the legitimate result of Rome's suppression of the Scriptures. ( see Appendix
.) It presented the most striking illustration which the world has
ever witnessed of the working out of the papal policy-- an illustration of
the results to which for more than a thousand
years the teaching of the Roman Church had been tending.

The suppression of the Scriptures during the period of papal supremacy was
foretold by the prophets; and the Revelator points also to the terrible
results that were to accrue especially to France from the domination of the
"man of sin."

Said the angel of the Lord: "The holy city shall they tread underfoot forty
and two months. And I will give power unto My two witnesses, and they shall
prophesy a thousand two hundred and threescore days, clothed in sackcloth. .
. . And when they shall have finished their testimony, the beast that
ascendeth out of the bottomless pit shall make war against them, and shall
overcome them, and kill them. And their dead bodies shall lie in the street
of the great city, which spiritually is called Sodom and Egypt, where also
our Lord was crucified. . . . And they that dwell upon the earth shall
rejoice over them, and make merry, and shall send gifts one to another;
because these two prophets tormented them that dwelt on the earth. And after
three days and a half the Spirit of life from God entered into them, and
they stood upon their feet; and great fear fell upon them which saw them."
Revelation 11:2-11.

The periods here mentioned--"forty and two months," and "a thousand two
hundred and threescore days"--are the same, alike representing the time in
which the church of Christ was to suffer oppression from Rome. The 1260
years of papal supremacy began in A.D. 538, and would therefore terminate in
1798. (See Appendix note for page 54
.) At that time a French army entered
Rome and made the pope a prisoner, and he died in exile. Though a new pope
was soon afterward elected, the papal hierarchy has never since been able to
wield the power which it before possessed.

The persecution of the church did not continue throughout the entire period
of the 1260 years. God in mercy to His people cut short the time of their
fiery trial. In foretelling the
"great tribulation" to befall the church, the Saviour said: "Except those
days should be shortened, there should no flesh be saved: but for the
elect's sake those days shall be shortened." Matthew 24:22. Through the
influence of the Reformation the persecution was brought to an end prior to
1798.

Concerning the two witnesses the prophet declares further: "These are the
two olive trees, and the two candlesticks standing before the God of the
earth." "Thy word," said the psalmist, "is a lamp unto my feet, and a light
unto my path." Revelation 11:4; Psalm 119:105. The two witnesses represent
the Scriptures of the Old and the New Testament. Both are important
testimonies to the origin and perpetuity of the law of God. Both are
witnesses also to the plan of salvation. The types, sacrifices, and
prophecies of the Old Testament point forward to a Saviour to come. The
Gospels and Epistles of the New Testament tell of a Saviour who has come in
the exact manner foretold by type and prophecy.

"They shall prophecy a thousand two hundred and three-score days, clothed in
sackcloth." During the greater part of this period, God's witnesses remained
in a state of obscurity. The papal power sought to hide from the people the
word of truth, and set before them false witnesses to contradict its
testimony. ( see Appendix
.) When the Bible was proscribed by religious and
secular authority; when its testimony was perverted, and every effort made
that men and demons could invent to turn the minds of the people from it;
when those who dared proclaim its sacred truths were hunted, betrayed,
tortured, buried in dungeon cells, martyred for their faith, or compelled to
flee to mountain fastnesses, and to dens and caves of the earth--then the
faithful witnesses prophesied in sackcloth. Yet they continued their
testimony throughout the entire period of 1260 years. In the darkest times
there were faithful men who loved God's word and were jealous for His honor.
To these loyal servants were
given wisdom, power, and authority to declare His truth during the whole of
this time.

"And if any man will hurt them, fire proceedeth out of their mouth, and
devoureth their enemies: and if any man will hurt them, he must in this
manner be killed." Revelation 11:5. Men cannot with impunity trample upon
the word of God. The meaning of this fearful denunciation is set forth in
the closing chapter of the Revelation: "I testify unto every man that
heareth the words of the prophecy of this book, If any man shall add unto
these things, God shall add unto him the plagues that are written in this
book: and if any man shall take away from the words of the book of this
prophecy, God shall take away his part out of the book of life, and out of
the holy city, and from the things which are written in this book."
Revelation 22:18, 19.

Such are the warnings which God has given to guard men against changing in
any manner that which He has revealed or commanded. These solemn
denunciations apply to all who by their influence lead men to regard lightly
the law of God. They should cause those to fear and tremble who flippantly
declare it a matter of little consequence whether we obey God's law or not.
All who exalt their own opinions above divine revelation, all who would
change the plain meaning of Scripture to suit their own convenience, or for
the sake of conforming to the world, are taking upon themselves a fearful
responsibility. The written word, the law of God, will measure the character
of every man and condemn all whom this unerring test shall declare wanting.

"When they shall have finished [are finishing] their testimony." The period
when the two witnesses were to prophesy clothed in sackcloth, ended in 1798.
As they were approaching the termination of their work in obscurity, war was
to be made upon them by the power represented as "the beast that ascendeth
out of the bottomless pit." In many of the nations of Europe the powers that
ruled in church and state had for centuries been controlled by Satan through
the
medium of the papacy. But here is brought to view a new manifestation of
satanic power.

It had been Rome's policy, under a profession of reverence for the Bible, to
keep it locked up in an unknown tongue and hidden away from the people.
Under her rule the witnesses prophesied "clothed in sackcloth." But another
power --the beast from the bottomless pit--was to arise to make open, avowed
war upon the word of God.

"The great city" in whose streets the witnesses are slain, and where their
dead bodies lie, is "spiritually" Egypt. Of all nations presented in Bible
history, Egypt most boldly denied the existence of the living God and
resisted His commands. No monarch ever ventured upon more open and
highhanded rebellion against the authority of Heaven than did the king of
Egypt. When the message was brought him by Moses, in the name of the Lord,
Pharaoh proudly answered: "Who is Jehovah, that I should hearken unto His
voice to let Israel go? I know not Jehovah, and moreover I will not let
Israel go." Exodus 5:2, A.R.V. This is atheism, and the nation represented
by Egypt would give voice to a similar denial of the claims of the living
God and would manifest a like spirit of unbelief and defiance. "The great
city" is also compared, "spiritually," to Sodom. The corruption of Sodom in
breaking the law of God was especially manifested in licentiousness. And
this sin was also to be a pre-eminent characteristic of the nation that
should fulfill the specifications of this scripture.

According to the words of the prophet, then, a little before the year 1798
some power of satanic origin and character would rise to make war upon the
Bible. And in the land where the testimony of God's two witnesses should
thus be silenced, there would be manifest the atheism of the Pharaoh and the
licentiousness of Sodom.

This prophecy has received a most exact and striking fulfillment in the
history of France. During the Revolution, in
1793, "the world for the first time heard an assembly of men,
born and educated in civilization, and assuming the right to govern one of
the finest of the European nations, uplift their united voice to deny the
most solemn truth which man's soul receives, and renounce unanimously the
belief and worship of a Deity."--Sir Walter Scott, Life of Napoleon, vol. 1, ch.
17. "France is the only nation in the world concerning which
the authentic record survives, that as a nation she lifted her hand in open
rebellion against the Author of the universe. Plenty of blasphemers, plenty
of infidels, there have been, and still continue to be, in England, Germany,
Spain, and elsewhere; but France stands apart in the world's history as the
single state which, by the decree of her Legislative Assembly, pronounced
that there was no God, and of which the entire population of the capital,
and a vast majority elsewhere, women as well as men, danced and sang with
joy in accepting the announcement."--Blackwood's Magazine, November, 1870.

France presented also the characteristics which especially distinguished
Sodom. During the Revolution there was manifest a state of moral debasement
and corruption similar to that which brought destruction upon the cities of
the plain. And the historian presents together the atheism and the
licentiousness of France, as given in the prophecy: "Intimately connected
with these laws affecting religion, was that which reduced the union of
marriage--the most sacred engagement which human beings can form, and the
permanence of which leads most strongly to the consolidation of society--to
the state of a mere civil contract of a transitory character, which any two
persons might engage in and cast loose at pleasure. . . . If fiends had set
themselves to work to discover a mode of most effectually destroying
whatever is venerable, graceful, or permanent in domestic life, and of
obtaining at the same time an assurance that the mischief which it was their
object to create should be perpetuated from one generation to another, they
could not have invented a more effectual plan that the degradation of
marriage. . . . Sophie Arnoult, an
actress famous for the witty things she said, described the republican
marriage as 'the sacrament of adultery.'"--Scott, vol. 1, ch. 17.

"Where also our Lord was crucified." This specification of the prophecy was
also fulfilled by France. In no land had the spirit of enmity against Christ
been more strikingly displayed. In no country had the truth encountered more
bitter and cruel opposition. In the persecution which France had visited
upon the confessors of the gospel, she had crucified Christ in the person of
His disciples.

Century after century the blood of the saints had been shed. While the
Waldenses laid down their lives upon the mountains of Piedmont "for the word
of God, and for the testimony of Jesus Christ," similar witness to the truth
had been borne by their brethren, the Albigenses of France. In the days of
the Reformation its disciples had been put to death with horrible tortures.
King and nobles, highborn women and delicate maidens, the pride and chivalry
of the nation, had feasted their eyes upon the agonies of the martyrs of
Jesus. The brave Huguenots, battling for those rights which the human heart
holds most sacred, had poured out their blood on many a hard-fought field.
The Protestants were counted as outlaws, a price was set upon their heads,
and they were hunted down like wild beasts.

The "Church in the Desert," the few descendants of the ancient Christians
that still lingered in France in the eighteenth century, hiding away in the
mountains of the south, still cherished the faith of their fathers. As they
ventured to meet by night on mountainside or lonely moor, they were chased
by dragoons and dragged away to lifelong slavery in the galleys. The purest,
the most refined, and the most intelligent of the French were chained, in
horrible torture, amidst robbers and assassins. (See Wylie, b. 22, ch.
6.) Others, more mercifully dealt with, were shot down in
cold blood, as, unarmed and helpless, they fell upon their
knees in prayer. Hundreds of aged men, defenseless women, and innocent
children were left dead upon the earth at their place of meeting. In
traversing the mountainside or the forest, where they had been accustomed to
assemble, it was not unusual to find "at every four paces, dead bodies
dotting the sward, and corpses hanging suspended from the trees." Their
country, laid waste with the sword, the ax, the fagot, "was converted into
one vast, gloomy wilderness." "These atrocities were enacted . . . in no
dark age, but in the brilliant era of Louis XIV. Science was then
cultivated, letters flourished, the divines of the court and of the capital
were learned and eloquent men, and greatly affected the graces of meekness
and charity."--Ibid., b. 22, ch. 7.

But blackest in the black catalogue of crime, most horrible among the
fiendish deeds of all the dreadful centuries, was the St. Bartholomew
Massacre. The world still recalls with shuddering horror the scenes of that
most cowardly and cruel onslaught. The king of France, urged on by Romish
priests and prelates, lent his sanction to the dreadful work. A bell,
tolling at dead of night, was a signal for the slaughter. Protestants by
thousands, sleeping quietly in their homes, trusting to the plighted honor
of their king, were dragged forth without a warning and murdered in cold
blood.

As Christ was the invisible leader of His people from Egyptian bondage, so
was Satan the unseen leader of his subjects in this horrible work of
multiplying martyrs. For seven days the massacre was continued in Paris, the
first three with inconceivable fury. And it was not confined to the city
itself, but by special order of the king was extended to all the provinces
and towns where Protestants were found. Neither age nor sex was respected.
Neither the innocent babe nor the man of gray hairs was spared. Noble and
peasant, old and young, mother and child, were cut down together. Throughout
France the butchery continued for two months. Seventy thousand of the very
flower of the nation perished.

"When the news of the massacre reached Rome, the
exultation among the clergy knew no bounds. The cardinal of Lorraine
rewarded the messenger with a thousand crowns; the cannon of St. Angelo
thundered forth a joyous salute; and bells rang out from every steeple;
bonfires turned night into day; and Gregory XIII, attended by the cardinals
and other ecclesiastical dignitaries, went in long procession to the church
of St. Louis, where the cardinal of Lorraine chanted a Te Deum. . . . A
medal was struck to commemorate the massacre, and in the Vatican may still
be seen three frescoes of Vasari, describing the attack upon the admiral,
the king in council plotting the massacre, and the massacre itself. Gregory
sent Charles the Golden Rose; and four months after the massacre, . . . he
listened complacently to the sermon of a French priest, . . . who spoke of
'that day so full of happiness and joy, when the most holy father received
the news, and went in solemn state to render thanks to God and St.
Louis.'"--Henry White, The Massacre of St. Bartholomew, ch. 14, par. 34.

The same master spirit that urged on the St. Bartholomew Massacre led also
in the scenes of the Revolution. Jesus Christ was declared to be an
impostor, and the rallying cry of the French infidels was, "Crush the
Wretch," meaning Christ. Heaven-daring blasphemy and abominable wickedness
went hand in hand, and the basest of men, the most abandoned monsters of
cruelty and vice, were most highly exalted. In all this, supreme homage was
paid to Satan; while Christ, in His characteristics of truth, purity, and
unselfish love, was crucified.

"The beast that ascendeth out of the bottomless pit shall make war against
them, and shall overcome them, and kill them." The atheistical power that
ruled in France during the Revolution and the Reign of Terror, did wage such
a war against God and His holy word as the world had never witnessed. The
worship of the Deity was abolished by the National Assembly. Bibles were
collected and publicly burned with every possible manifestation of scorn.
The law of God
was trampled underfoot. The institutions of the Bible were abolished. The
weekly rest day was set aside, and in its stead every tenth day was devoted
to reveling and blasphemy. Baptism and the Communion were prohibited. And
announcements posted conspicuously over the burial places declared death to
be an eternal sleep.

The fear of God was said to be so far from the beginning of wisdom that it
was the beginning of folly. All religious worship was prohibited, except
that of liberty and the country. The "constitutional bishop of Paris was
brought forward to play the principal part in the most impudent and
scandalous farce ever acted in the face of a national representation. . . .
He was brought forward in full procession, to declare to the Convention that
the religion which he had taught so many years was, in every respect, a
piece of priestcraft, which had no foundation either in history or sacred
truth. He disowned, in solemn and explicit terms, the existence of the Deity
to whose worship he had been consecrated, and devoted himself in future to
the homage of liberty, equality, virtue, and morality. He then laid on the
table his episcopal decorations, and received a fraternal embrace from the
president of the Convention. Several apostate priests followed the example
of this prelate."--Scott, vol. 1, ch. 17.

"And they that dwell upon the earth shall rejoice over them, and make merry,
and shall send gifts one to another; because these two prophets tormented
them that dwelt on the earth." Infidel France had silenced the reproving
voice of God's two witnesses. The word of truth lay dead in her streets, and
those who hated the restrictions and requirements of God's law were
jubilant. Men publicly defied the King of heaven. Like the sinners of old,
they cried: "How doth God know? and is there knowledge in the Most High?"
Psalm 73:11.

With blasphemous boldness almost beyond belief, one of the priests of the
new order said: "God, if You exist, avenge Your injured name. I bid You
defiance! You remain silent; You dare not launch Your thunders. Who after
this will
believe in Your existence?"--Lacretelle, History, vol. 11, p.
309; in Sir Archibald Alison, History of Europe, vol. 1,
ch. 10. What an echo is this of the Pharaoh's demand: "Who is Jehovah, that
I should obey His voice?" "I know not Jehovah!"

"The fool hath said in his heart, There is no God." Psalm 14:1. And the Lord
declares concerning the perverters of the truth: "Their folly shall be
manifest unto all." 2 Timothy 3:9. After France had renounced the worship of
the living God, "the high and lofty One that inhabiteth eternity," it was
only a little time till she descended to degrading idolatry, by the worship
of the Goddess of Reason, in the person of a profligate woman. And this in
the representative assembly of the nation, and by its highest civil and
legislative authorities! Says the historian: "One of the ceremonies of this
insane time stands unrivaled for absurdity combined with impiety. The doors
of the Convention were thrown open to a band of musicians, preceded by whom,
the members of the municipal body entered in solemn procession, singing a
hymn in praise of liberty, and escorting, as the object of their future
worship, a veiled female, whom they termed the Goddess of Reason. Being
brought within the bar, she was unveiled with great form, and placed on the
right of the president, when she was generally recognized as a dancing girl
of the opera. . . . To this person, as the fittest representative of that
reason whom they worshiped, the National Convention of France rendered
public homage.

"This impious and ridiculous mummery had a certain fashion; and the
installation of the Goddess of Reason was renewed and imitated throughout
the nation, in such places where the inhabitants desired to show themselves
equal to all the heights of the Revolution."--Scott, vol. 1, ch. 17.

Said the orator who introduced the worship of Reason: "Legislators!
Fanaticism has given way to reason. Its bleared eyes could not endure the
brilliancy of the light. This day an immense concourse has assembled beneath
those gothic vaults, which, for the first time, re-echoed the truth. There
the French have celebrated the only true worship,--that of Liberty, that of
Reason. There we have formed wishes for the prosperity of the arms of the
Republic. There we have abandoned inanimate idols for Reason, for that
animated image, the masterpiece of nature."--M. A. Thiers, History of the
French Revolution, vol. 2, pp. 370, 371.

When the goddess was brought into the Convention, the orator took her by the
hand, and turning to the assembly said: "Mortals, cease to tremble before
the powerless thunders of a God whom your fears have created. Henceforth
acknowledge no divinity but Reason. I offer you its noblest and purest
image; if you must have idols, sacrifice only to such as this. . . . Fall
before the august Senate of Freedom, oh! Veil of Reason!"

"The goddess, after being embraced by the president, was mounted on a
magnificent car, and conducted, amid an immense crowd, to the cathedral of
Notre Dame, to take the place of the Deity. There she was elevated on the
high altar, and received the adoration of all present."--Alison, vol. 1, ch.
10.

This was followed, not long afterward, by the public burning of the Bible.
On one occasion "the Popular Society of the Museum" entered the hall of the
municipality, exclaiming, "Vive la Raison!" and carrying on the top of a
pole the half-burned remains of several books, among others breviaries,
missals, and the Old and New Testaments, which "expiated in a great fire,"
said the president, "all the fooleries which they have made the human race
commit."--Journal of Paris, 1793, No. 318. Quoted in Buchez-Roux, Collection
of Parliamentary History, vol. 30, pp. 200, 201.

It was popery that had begun the work which atheism was completing. The
policy of Rome had wrought out those conditions, social, political, and
religious, that were hurrying France on to ruin. Writers, in referring to
the horrors of the Revolution, say that these excesses are to be charged
upon the throne and the church. ( see Appendix
.) In strict justice they are
to be charged upon the church. Popery had poisoned the
minds of kings against the Reformation, as an enemy to the crown, an element
of discord that would be fatal to the peace and harmony of the nation. It
was the genius of Rome that by this means inspired the direst cruelty and
the most galling oppression which proceeded from the throne.

The spirit of liberty went with the Bible. Wherever the gospel was received,
the minds of the people were awakened. They began to cast off the shackles
that had held them bondslaves of ignorance, vice, and superstition. They
began to think and act as men. Monarchs saw it and trembled for their
despotism.

Rome was not slow to inflame their jealous fears. Said the pope to the
regent of France in 1525: "This mania [Protestantism] will not only confound
and destroy religion, but all principalities, nobility, laws, orders, and
ranks besides."-- G. de Felice, History of the Protestants of France, b. 1,
ch. 2, par. 8. A few years later a papal nuncio warned the king: "Sire, be
not deceived. The Protestants will upset all civil as well as religious
order. . . . The throne is in as much danger as the altar. . . . The
introduction of a new religion must necessarily introduce a new
government."--D'Aubigne, History of the Reformation in Europe in the Time of
Calvin, b. 2, ch. 36. And theologians appealed to the prejudices of the
people by declaring that the Protestant doctrine "entices men away to
novelties and folly; it robs the king of the devoted affection of his
subjects, and devastates both church and state." Thus Rome succeeded in
arraying France against the Reformation. "It was to uphold the throne,
preserve the nobles, and maintain the laws, that the sword of persecution
was first unsheathed in France."--Wylie, b. 13, ch. 4.

Little did the rulers of the land foresee the results of that fateful
policy. The teaching of the Bible would have implanted in the minds and
hearts of the people those principles of justice, temperance, truth, equity,
and benevolence which are the very cornerstone of a nation's prosperity.
"Righteousness exalteth a nation." Thereby "the throne is established."

Proverbs 14:34; 16:12. "The work of righteousness shall be peace;" and the
effect, "quietness and assurance forever." Isaiah 32:17. He who obeys the
divine law will most truly respect and obey the laws of his country. He who
fears God will honor the king in the exercise of all just and legitimate
authority. But unhappy France prohibited the Bible and banned its disciples.
Century after century, men of principle and integrity, men of intellectual
acuteness and moral strength, who had the courage to avow their convictions
and the faith to suffer for the truth--for centuries these men toiled as
slaves in the galleys, perished at the stake, or rotted in dungeon cells.
Thousands upon thousands found safety in flight; and this continued for two
hundred and fifty years after the opening of the Reformation.

"Scarcely was there a generation of Frenchmen during the long period that
did not witness the disciples of the gospel fleeing before the insane fury
of the persecutor, and carrying with them the intelligence, the arts, the
industry, the order, in which, as a rule, they pre-eminently excelled, to
enrich the lands in which they found an asylum. And in proportion as they
replenished other countries with these good gifts, did they empty their own
of them. If all that was now driven away had been retained in France; if,
during these three hundred years, the industrial skill of the exiles had
been cultivating her soil; if, during these three hundred years, their
artistic bent had been improving her manufactures; if, during these three
hundred years, their creative genius and analytic power had been enriching
her literature and cultivating her science; if their wisdom had been guiding
her councils, their bravery fighting her battles, their equity framing her
laws, and the religion of the Bible strengthening the intellect and
governing the conscience of her people, what a glory would at this day have
encompassed France! What a great, prosperous, and happy country--a pattern
to the nations--would she have been!

"But a blind and inexorable bigotry chased from her soil every teacher of
virtue, every champion of order, every honest defender of the throne; it
said to the men who would have made their country a 'renown and glory' in
the earth, Choose which you will have, a stake or exile. At last the ruin of
the state was complete; there remained no more conscience to be proscribed;
no more religion to be dragged to the stake; no more patriotism to be chased
into banishment."--Wylie, b. 13, ch. 20. And the Revolution, with all its
horrors, was the dire result.

"With the flight of the Huguenots a general decline settled upon France.
Flourishing manufacturing cities fell into decay; fertile districts returned
to their native wildness; intellectual dullness and moral declension
succeeded a period of unwonted progress. Paris became one vast almshouse,
and it is estimated that, at the breaking out of the Revolution, two hundred
thousand paupers claimed charity from the hands of the king. The Jesuits
alone flourished in the decaying nation, and ruled with dreadful tyranny
over churches and schools, the prisons and the galleys."

The gospel would have brought to France the solution of those political and
social problems that baffled the skill of her clergy, her king, and her
legislators, and finally plunged the nation into anarchy and ruin. But under
the domination of Rome the people had lost the Saviour's blessed lessons of
self-sacrifice and unselfish love. They had been led away from the practice
of self-denial for the good of others. The rich had found no rebuke for
their oppression of the poor, the poor no help for their servitude and
degradation. The selfishness of the wealthy and powerful grew more and more
apparent and oppressive. For centuries the greed and profligacy of the noble
resulted in grinding extortion toward the peasant. The rich wronged the
poor, and the poor hated the rich.

In many provinces the estates were held by the nobles, and the laboring
classes were only tenants; they were at the mercy
of their landlords and were forced to submit to their exorbitant demands.
The burden of supporting both the church and the state fell upon the middle
and lower classes, who were heavily taxed by the civil authorities and by
the clergy. "The pleasure of the nobles was considered the supreme law; the
farmers and the peasants might starve, for aught their oppressors cared. . .
. The people were compelled at every turn to consult the exclusive interest
of the landlord. The lives of the agricultural laborers were lives of
incessant work and unrelieved misery; their complaints, if they ever dared
to complain, were treated with insolent contempt. The courts of justice
would always listen to a noble as against a peasant; bribes were notoriously
accepted by the judges; and the merest caprice of the aristocracy had the
force of law, by virtue of this system of universal corruption. Of the taxes
wrung from the commonalty, by the secular magnates on the one hand, and the
clergy on the other, not half ever found its way into the royal or episcopal
treasury; the rest was squandered in profligate self-indulgence. And the men
who thus impoverished their fellow subjects were themselves exempt from
taxation, and entitled by law or custom to all the appointments of the
state. The privileged classes numbered a hundred and fifty thousand, and for
their gratification millions were condemned to hopeless and degrading
lives." ( see Appendix
.)

The court was given up to luxury and profligacy. There was little confidence
existing between the people and the rulers. Suspicion fastened upon all the
measures of the government as designing and selfish. For more than half a
century before the time of the Revolution the throne was occupied by Louis
XV, who, even in those evil times, was distinguished as an indolent,
frivolous, and sensual monarch. With a depraved and cruel aristocracy and an
impoverished and ignorant lower class, the state financially embarrassed and
the people exasperated, it needed no prophet's eye to foresee a terrible
impending outbreak. To the warnings of his counselors the king was
accustomed to reply: "Try to
make things go on as long as I am likely to live; after my death it may be
as it will." It was in vain that the necessity of reform was urged. He saw
the evils, but had neither the courage nor the power to meet them. The doom
awaiting France was but too truly pictured in his indolent and selfish
answer, "After me, the deluge!"

By working upon the jealousy of the kings and the ruling classes, Rome had
influenced them to keep the people in bondage, well knowing that the state
would thus be weakened, and purposing by this means to fasten both rulers
and people in her thrall. With farsighted policy she perceived that in order
to enslave men effectually, the shackles must be bound upon their souls;
that the surest way to prevent them from escaping their bondage was to
render them incapable of freedom. A thousandfold more terrible than the
physical suffering which resulted from her policy, was the moral
degradation. Deprived of the Bible, and abandoned to the teachings of
bigotry and selfishness, the people were shrouded in ignorance and
superstition, and sunken in vice, so that they were wholly unfitted for
self-government.

But the outworking of all this was widely different from what Rome had
purposed. Instead of holding the masses in a blind submission to her dogmas,
her work resulted in making them infidels and revolutionists. Romanism they
despised as priestcraft. They beheld the clergy as a party to their
oppression. The only god they knew was the god of Rome; her teaching was
their only religion. They regarded her greed and cruelty as the legitimate
fruit of the Bible, and they would have none of it.

Rome had misrepresented the character of God and perverted His requirements,
and now men rejected both the Bible and its Author. She had required a blind
faith in her dogmas, under the pretended sanction of the Scriptures. In the
reaction, Voltaire and his associates cast aside God's word altogether and
spread everywhere the poison of infidelity. Rome had ground down the people
under her iron heel; and now the masses, degraded and brutalized, in their
recoil from
her tyranny, cast off all restraint. Enraged at the glittering cheat to
which they had so long paid homage, they rejected truth and falsehood
together; and mistaking license for liberty, the slaves of vice exulted in
their imagined freedom.

At the opening of the Revolution, by a concession of the king, the people
were granted a representation exceeding that of the nobles and the clergy
combined. Thus the balance of power was in their hands; but they were not
prepared to use it with wisdom and moderation. Eager to redress the wrongs
they had suffered, they determined to undertake the reconstruction of
society. An outraged populace, whose minds were filled with bitter and
long-treasured memories of wrong, resolved to revolutionize the state of
misery that had grown unbearable and to avenge themselves upon those whom
they regarded as the authors of their sufferings. The oppressed wrought out
the lesson they had learned under tyranny and became the oppressors of those
who had oppressed them.

Unhappy France reaped in blood the harvest she had sown. Terrible were the
results of her submission to the controlling power of Rome. Where France,
under the influence of Romanism, had set up the first stake at the opening
of the Reformation, there the Revolution set up its first guillotine. On the
very spot where the first martyrs to the Protestant faith were burned in the
sixteenth century, the first victims were guillotined in the eighteenth. In
repelling the gospel, which would have brought her healing, France had
opened the door to infidelity and ruin. When the restraints of God's law
were cast aside, it was found that the laws of man were inadequate to hold
in check the powerful tides of human passion; and the nation swept on to
revolt and anarchy. The war against the Bible inaugurated an era which
stands in the world's history as the Reign of Terror. Peace and happiness
were banished from the homes and hearts of men. No one was secure. He who
triumphed today was suspected, condemned, tomorrow. Violence and lust held
undisputed sway.

King, clergy, and nobles were compelled to submit to the atrocities of an
excited and maddened people. Their thirst for vengeance was only stimulated
by the execution of the king; and those who had decreed his death soon
followed him to the scaffold. A general slaughter of all suspected of
hostility to the Revolution was determined. The prisons were crowded, at one
time containing more than two hundred thousand captives. The cities of the
kingdom were filled with scenes of horror. One party of revolutionists was
against another party, and France became a vast field for contending masses,
swayed by the fury of their passions. "In Paris one tumult succeeded
another, and the citizens were divided into a medley of factions, that
seemed intent on nothing but mutual extermination." And to add to the
general misery, the nation became involved in a prolonged and devastating
war with the great powers of Europe. "The country was nearly bankrupt, the
armies were clamoring for arrears of pay, the Parisians were starving, the
provinces were laid waste by brigands, and civilization was almost
extinguished in anarchy and license."

All too well the people had learned the lessons of cruelty and torture which
Rome had so diligently taught. A day of retribution at last had come. It was
not now the disciples of Jesus that were thrust into dungeons and dragged to
the stake. Long ago these had perished or been driven into exile. Unsparing
Rome now felt the deadly power of those whom she had trained to delight in
deeds of blood. "The example of persecution which the clergy of France had
exhibited for so many ages, was now retorted upon them with signal vigor.
The scaffolds ran red with the blood of the priests. The galleys and the
prisons, once crowded with Huguenots, were now filled with their
persecutors. Chained to the bench and toiling at the oar, the Roman Catholic
clergy experienced all those woes which their church had so freely inflicted
on the gentle heretics." ( see Appendix
.)

"Then came those days when the most barbarous of all codes was administered
by the most barbarous of all tribunals; when no man could greet his
neighbors or say his prayers . . . without danger of committing a capital
crime; when spies lurked in every corner; when the guillotine was long and
hard at work every morning; when the jails were filled as close as the holds
of a slave ship; when the gutters ran foaming with blood into the Seine. . .
. While the daily wagonloads of victims were carried to their doom through
the streets of Paris, the proconsuls, whom the sovereign committee had sent
forth to the departments, reveled in an extravagance of cruelty unknown even
in the capital. The knife of the deadly machine rose and fell too slow for
their work of slaughter. Long rows of captives were mowed down with
grapeshot. Holes were made in the bottom of crowded barges. Lyons was turned
into a desert. At Arras even the cruel mercy of a speedy death was denied to
the prisoners. All down the Loire, from Saumur to the sea, great flocks of
crows and kites feasted on naked corpses, twined together in hideous
embraces. No mercy was shown to sex or age. The number of young lads and of
girls of seventeen who were murdered by that execrable government, is to be
reckoned by hundreds. Babies torn from the breast were tossed from pike to
pike along the Jacobin ranks." ( see Appendix
.) In the short space of ten
years, multitudes of human beings perished.

All this was as Satan would have it. This was what for ages he had been
working to secure. His policy is deception from first to last, and his
steadfast purpose is to bring woe and wretchedness upon men, to deface and
defile the workmanship of God, to mar the divine purposes of benevolence and
love, and thus cause grief in heaven. Then by his deceptive arts he blinds
the minds of men, and leads them to throw back the blame of his work upon
God, as if all this misery were the result of the Creator's plan. In like
manner, when
those who have been degraded and brutalized through his cruel power achieve
their freedom, he urges them on to excesses and atrocities. Then this
picture of unbridled license is pointed out by tyrants and oppressors as an
illustration of the results of liberty.

When error in one garb has been detected, Satan only masks it in a different
disguise, and multitudes receive it as eagerly as at the first. When the
people found Romanism to be a deception, and he could not through this
agency lead them to transgression of God's law, he urged them to regard all
religion as a cheat, and the Bible as a fable; and, casting aside the divine
statutes, they gave themselves up to unbridled iniquity.

The fatal error which wrought such woe for the inhabitants of France was the
ignoring of this one great truth: that true freedom lies within the
proscriptions of the law of God. "O that thou hadst hearkened to My
commandments! then had thy peace been as a river, and thy righteousness as
the waves of the sea." "There is no peace, saith the Lord, unto the wicked."
"But whoso hearkeneth unto Me shall dwell safely, and shall be quiet from
fear of evil." Isaiah 48:18, 22; Proverbs 1:33.

Atheists, infidels, and apostates oppose and denounce God's law; but the
results of their influence prove that the well-being of man is bound up with
his obedience of the divine statutes. Those who will not read the lesson
from the book of God are bidden to read it in the history of nations.

When Satan wrought through the Roman Church to lead men away from obedience,
his agency was concealed, and his work was so disguised that the degradation
and misery which resulted were not seen to be the fruit of transgression.
And his power was so far counteracted by the working of the Spirit of God
that his purposes were prevented from reaching their full fruition. The
people did not trace the effect to its cause and discover the source of
their miseries. But in the
Revolution the law of God was openly set aside by the National Council. And
in the Reign of Terror which followed, the working of cause and effect could
be seen by all.

When France publicly rejected God and set aside the Bible, wicked men and
spirits of darkness exulted in their attainment of the object so long
desired--a kingdom free from the restraints of the law of God. Because
sentence against an evil work was not speedily executed, therefore the heart
of the sons of men was "fully set in them to do evil." Ecclesiastes 8:11.
But the transgression of a just and righteous law must inevitably result in
misery and ruin. Though not visited at once with judgments, the wickedness
of men was nevertheless surely working out their doom. Centuries of apostasy
and crime had been treasuring up wrath against the day of retribution; and
when their iniquity was full, the despisers of God learned too late that it
is a fearful thing to have worn out the divine patience. The restraining
Spirit of God, which imposes a check upon the cruel power of Satan, was in a
great measure removed, and he whose only delight is the wretchedness of men
was permitted to work his will. Those who had chosen the service of
rebellion were left to reap its fruits until the land was filled with crimes
too horrible for pen to trace. From devastated provinces and ruined cities a
terrible cry was heard--a cry of bitterest anguish. France was shaken as if
by an earthquake. Religion, law, social order, the family, the state, and
the church--all were smitten down by the impious hand that had been lifted
against the law of God. Truly spoke the wise man: "The wicked shall fall by
his own wickedness." "Though a sinner do evil a hundred times, and his days
be prolonged, yet surely I know that it shall be well with them that fear
God, which fear before Him: but it shall not be well with the wicked."
Proverbs 11:5; Ecclesiastes 8:12, 13. "They hated knowledge, and did not
choose the fear of the Lord;" "therefore shall they eat of the fruit of
their own way, and be filled with their own devices." Proverbs 1:29, 31.

God's faithful witnesses, slain by the blasphemous power that "ascendeth out
of the bottomless pit," were not long to remain silent. "After three days
and a half the Spirit of life from God entered into them, and they stood
upon their feet; and great fear fell upon them which saw them." Revelation
11:11. It was in 1793 that the decrees which abolished the Christian
religion and set aside the Bible passed the French Assembly. Three years and
a half later a resolution rescinding these decrees, thus granting toleration
to the Scriptures, was adopted by the same body. The world stood aghast at
the enormity of guilt which had resulted from a rejection of the Sacred
Oracles, and men recognized the necessity of faith in God and His word as
the foundation of virtue and morality. Saith the Lord: "Whom hast thou
reproached and blasphemed? and against whom hast thou exalted thy voice, and
lifted up thine eyes on high? even against the Holy One of Israel," Isaiah
37:23. "Therefore, behold, I will cause them to know, this once will I cause
them to know My hand and My might; and they shall know that My name is
Jehovah." Jeremiah 16:21, A.R.V.

Concerning the two witnesses the prophet declares further: "And they heard a
great voice from heaven saying unto them, Come up hither. And they ascended
up to heaven in a cloud; and their enemies beheld them." Revelation 11:12.
Since France made war upon God's two witnesses, they have been honored as
never before. In 1804 the British and Foreign Bible Society was organized.
This was followed by similar organizations, with numerous branches, upon the
continent of Europe. In 1816 the American Bible Society was founded. When
the British Society was formed, the Bible had been printed and circulated in
fifty tongues. It has since been translated into many hundreds of languages
and dialects. ( see Appendix
.)

For the fifty years preceding 1792, little attention was given to the work
of foreign missions. No new societies were formed, and there were but few
churches that made any
effort for the spread of Christianity in heathen lands. But toward the close
of the eighteenth century a great change took place. Men became dissatisfied
with the results of rationalism and realized the necessity of divine
revelation and experimental religion. From this time the work of foreign
missions attained an unprecedented growth. ( see Appendix
.)

The improvements in printing have given an impetus to the work of
circulating the Bible. The increased facilities for communication between
different countries, the breaking down of ancient barriers of prejudice and
national exclusiveness, and the loss of secular power by the pontiff of Rome
have opened the way for the entrance of the word of God. For some years the
Bible has been sold without restraint in the streets of Rome, and it has now
been carried to every part of the habitable globe.

The infidel Voltaire once boastingly said: "I am weary of hearing people
repeat that twelve men established the Christian religion. I will prove that
one man may suffice to overthrow it." Generations have passed since his
death. Millions have joined in the war upon the Bible. But it is so far from
being destroyed, that where there were a hundred in Voltaire's time, there
are now ten thousand, yes, a hundred thousand copies of the book of God. In
the words of an early Reformer concerning the Christian church, "The Bible
is an anvil that has worn out many hammers." Saith the Lord: "No weapon that
is formed against thee shall prosper; and every tongue that shall rise
against thee in judgment thou shalt condemn." Isaiah 54:17.

"The word of our God shall stand forever." "All His commandments are sure.
They stand fast for ever and ever, and are done in truth and uprightness."
Isaiah 40:8; Psalm 111:7, 8. Whatever is built upon the authority of man
will be overthrown; but that which is founded upon the rock of God's
immutable word shall stand forever.